25. To what point will not
audacity burst forth when once it is freed from restraints? He has
imputed to himself the charge made against another so that we may be
thought to have invented it. I made a charge against some one unnamed,
and he takes it as spoken against himself; he purges himself from
another man’s sins, being only sure of his own innocence. For he
takes his oath that he did not write the letter that passed under my
name to the African bishops, in which I am made to confess that I had
been induced by Jewish influence to make false translations of the
Scriptures; and he sends me writings which contain all these things
which he declares to be unknown to him. It is remarkable to know how
his subtlety has coincided with another man’s malice, so that the
lies which this other told in Africa, he in accord with him declared to
be true; and also how that elegant style of his could be imitated by
some chance and unskilled person. You alone have the privilege of
translating the venom of the heretics, and of making all nations drink
a draught from the cup of Babylon. You may correct the Latin Scriptures
from the Greek. and may deliver to the Churches to read something
different from what they received from the Apostles; but I am not to be
allowed to go behind the Septuagint version which I translated after
strict correction for the men of my native tongue a great many years
ago, and, for the confutation of the Jews, to translate the actual
copies of the Scriptures which they confess to be the truest, so that
when a dispute arises between them and the Christians, they may have no
place of retreat and subterfuge, but may be smitten most effectually
with their own spear. I have written pretty fully on this point if I
rightly remember, in many other places, especially in the end of my
second book; and I have checked your popularity-hunting, with which you
seek to arouse ill will against me among the innocent and the
inexperienced, by a clear statement of fact. To that I think it enough
to refer the reader.